Streetwise

From the long-tenured head Goldman Sachs - an institution legendary for its culture of success - comes a candid memoir of global leadership in an age of extreme turbulence. 'Lloyd Blankfein is scary smart about people, markets, and life generally. His 10,000 Small Businesses idea proved to be a huge winner, and I personally witnessed the time and effort he devoted to its success. During the 2008-2009 financial crisis, Lloyd acted decisively, and he tells the story of what happened with unique insights.' WARREN BUFFETT 'Lloyd Blankfein has always been a straight shooter, but his journey from public housing to the heights of Wall Street wasn't a straight line. Streetwise is packed with important lessons about leadership, risk-taking, decision-making, and giving back.' MICHAEL BLOOMBERG When Lloyd Blankfein was attacked as a Wall Street fat cat, he had to smile, thinking of his precarious childhood in the notorious public housing projects of East New York, Brooklyn, and attending a high school so chaotic he didn't feel safe leaving class to go to the bathroom in his time there. Harvard University was a total moonshot, and his outsider status never wore off, there or at Harvard Law. When he struck people as street-y, it wasn't Wall Street they were thinking of. But if the chip never quite left Blankfein's shoulder, neither did a wry, resilient spirit and a lucid, democratic intelligence that saw through airs and found talent and ideas in unlikely places. Streetwise is a delightfully honest, sharp and often very funny reckoning with Blankfein's education - in finance, human nature and the workings of the world. It abounds with lessons about leading teams of brilliant, aggressive, competitive people and harmonising them around shared goals; changing when times are hard and when they're good; managing risk; and knowing a crisis is at hand before it swamps you so you can guide your team to the further shore.